Working Through Hurricane Sandy

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I live in Staten Island, New York. One of hardest hit places by Hurricane Sandy. My house is located 2 blocks from the beach, and I happen to be right in the evacuation zone. I wired up the whole house to a generator, and bought plenty of fuel in case we lost power.

Long story short, we decided not to evacuate until the last minute. We did pack everything up, and we planned an escape route. We werent effected by Hurricane Irene, and hoped that Hurricane Sandy would pass by the same way. I estimated that it would take exactly five minutes to leave in case we had to evacuate the last minute.

We stayed not because I am stubborn, but if you try to go somewhere in advance with a three year old toddler, and six month old twins, it isnt exactly easy.

So we stayed and waited, I went by the ocean every few hours to see the height of the waves.

BEFORE PHOTO

If you have been getting my emails, we are promoting our Wheel and Tire launch, and I scheduled those emails ahead of the storm.

AFTER PHOTO

It wasnt bad until Monday night when the hurricane was right off the coast. I came up to the beach to check the ocean level, and I saw a huge wave coming right at me from a distance. I have never seen the water level so high, the wave was higher than the the sea wall, and seconds later it covered up my car. The wave spilled on to the street, and that is when I reversed back to the house, took the kids and left to mother in laws house who lives on a big hill.

LESSON: A tree almost fell on my car (good call on reversing ahead of time), this is why you should evacuate before the storm hits.

The heavy winds lasted for about 8 hours.

I took a ride the next day around Staten Island, to check out the damage. You can see the videos on this play list here. That day it took me 2 hours to get to my house (usually it is a 20 minute drive). I was very fortunate, that the wave did not reach my house, it came about 100 feet from my backyard. The generator powered our whole house, until Wednesday morning when we got the power back.

Many people in New York were not as fortunate, and it is very heart breaking to see my fellow neighbors lose everything. I especially feel for the people that experienced being trapped on the second floor with sharks swarming the waters.